The Conservative shadow culture and sport spokesman said: “It truly saddens me to see under Labour’s leadership of the council they just don’t care about detail. This poster is yet another example which shows that they don’t have any civic pride in our town.

“The Hexagon is their responsibility and they should be promoting it, maximising sales and showing it off effectively to visitors and residents.

“This is just one of many ways in which I noticed them letting our town go to seed.”

He went on: “When we ran the council, we campaigned hard to ensure we got the funding for the station improvements.

“We delivered, meaning an improved station and many jobs in construction. We worked hard to deliver the new Tesco distribution centre for our town. We delivered on that, meaning nearly a thousand new jobs will be created at the centre over this summer and we supported our voluntary sector by increasing funding, at a time when other councils were cutting.”

Spokesman for the Labour group in Reading Cllr Pete Ruhemann said: “Cllr Cumpsty has always wanted to rewrite history, so let me first of all remind him the station improvements were committed as a result of a decade’s worth of effort by the Labour council before the 2010 General Election, that the plans for the Tesco distribution centre came forward after the Tories had lost control of Reading council and that many well-established voluntary organisations lost out when his group cut their funding.

“If he really wants now to pretend not a single torn poster was displayed at The Hexagon or elsewhere on RBC premises while he was leader of the council I don’t think that is a claim anybody would believe either. How puerile can the Tories get?”